Customer Case Study
Executive Summary
Customer Name: Banco de la Provincia de Córdoba (Bancor)
Industry: Banking and public finance
Location: Córdoba, Argentina
Number of Employees: 3000
Business Challenge:
• Train 3000 employees over 63,000 square miles across 243 branches efficiently and effectively.
• Distribute key marketing and sales messages to customers in every branch.
• Protect employees, customers and visitors in and around all branches 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Network Solution:
• Merged heterogeneous networks from different branches.
• Enabled Bancor to deliver integrated product offerings to customers.
• Delivered mission-critical security traffic to key personnel anywhere, anytime.
Business Results:
• Electronic transactions multiplied by eight.
• Cost of video solutions had immediate payback vs cost of sending trainers into field.
• Cross purposing of video solutions saves time and has increased revenue.
Bancor (Banco de la Provincia de Córdoba) is based in Córdoba, the capital of the second largest province in Argentina. Founded in 1873, Bancor is a financial institution with a rich history and significant importance for the economy of the province of Córdoba. It is ranked as one of the largest banks in Argentina, approximately 14th according to the latest available deposit volumes. The
Bancor network has 243 branches in an area covering more than 63,000 square miles, roughly the size of Greece or twice the size of Austria. In a region with a provincial population of 3 million inhabitants, Bancor serves over a million customers, who conduct over 9 million transactions per month. As a provincial bank, Bancor is constitutionally limited to the territory of Córdoba. Despite being curtailed geographically to the province, Bancor has to compete with national and international banks equipped with the latest technologies.
Bancor suffered, from 1970 until recent years, the cycles of the Argentinian economic crisis. To be competitive, Bancor needed a significant modernization of its network. In 2006, the current management decided to revitalize the bank’s systems, which dated from the 1980s. Networks were heterogeneous, and, in fact, many branches were not connected to the central systems. The biggest challenge was how to regain competitiveness by offering new products and services to customers while updating systems without any disruption of services or security.
Bancor had to change its ways of serving the public, and to achieve this goal, technology was an essential tool. “Without technology”, says Daniel Pilnik deputy general manager of technology systems and electronic banking of Banco de
Córdoba, “We couldn’t generate the bundled products that everybody wanted: a checking account, a savings account, a debit and credit card, all together as a bundle with a single cost. At that time, Bancor wasn’t able to do it.” An additional
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Customer Case Study challenge for Bancor was to train its 3000 dispersed employees in a short period of time on a new set of banking technologies.
Daniel Pilnik
Deputy general manager of operations and processes
“As a first step, we substantially improved our network service,” says Pilnik. “Then we integrated IP voice traffic to all the data that was flowing through the network.
We managed to incorporate technology and keep the amount of traditional operations stable with the same amount of IT staff, while the amount of electronic transactions multiplied eight times.”
In 2009, Bancor replaced computer equipment, migrated to Cisco® Unified
Communications, and implemented a new core banking solution. Working as a team, Grupo Galmes, a local Cisco Certified Premier Partner, Bancor, and
Cisco developed a strategic plan for video based on the network as the core bringing video solutions to customers and employees at all branches with no disruption of operations. This vision yielded a deployment of Cisco video solutions, including Cisco Video Surveillance Manager (VSM), Cisco Access Control, Cisco
TelePresence®, Cisco TelePresence Content Server, Cisco Media Experience
Engine (MXE), Cisco Cast, and Cisco Digital Signs across Bancor’s extensive geographical footprint.
In Latin America, Banco de Córdoba was the first corporation within the finance sector to deploy VSM, and the company has the largest VSM implementation with
Cisco cameras.
Digital Media Systems
Bancor invested heavily in Cisco Digital Media Systems, specifically Cisco Digital
Signs, Cisco Cast, and Cisco Digital Media Players, in over 150 locations. With a centralized content system, managed from the bank’s Capitalinas headquarters in
Córdoba, a small, expert team is able to quickly and easily control what appears on signage anywhere in the system, whether specific imagery on particular screens in distinct locations at precise times or simultaneously across the system, all depending on the bank’s needs and desires. The screens can display any static or moving images, such as current currency trading rates, lending rates, and advertising or new production information, in addition to the queuing system, which directs customer traffic flow within each branch.
Signage, however, was not limited to presenting messages to customers or information to employees during nonbanking hours. The network of digital signs became crucial in rolling out the core banking system to all staff across the network.
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Customer Case Study
Video Training
Cisco’s video platform enabled Bancor to successfully implement the new SAP core banking system in record time.
The training of personnel was a complex task that had to be accomplished in a short period of time. The training can’t be given too soon, because people tend to forget.
Nor after the implementation either because it would be useless. The challenge was to reach everybody at the same time with a unified message, within the time window these new implementation tools required. The solution was distance training with Cisco video systems.
The traditional model of training people on site would have required 16 teams to travel to 243 locations in a three-week timeframe. This approach would have run the risk of the messages not being homogeneous. With 90 percent of the money required to send experts to all locations for training on the first module alone, the bank covered 100 percent of the cost of the new solutions required to train live over video across the network.
Training was delivered simultaneously on Cisco Digital
Signs throughout the system and made available as video content on demand on Bancor’s intranet via Cisco video conferencing codecs, the TelePresence Content Server, the
Media Experience Engine, a multicast network, and the Digital
Media Players. According to Pilnik, “The best of Bancor’s accomplishment was that in the same platform [Digital
Signage], long distance training was delivered. Many people who usually had to travel to Córdoba to take the training in a classroom setting now could do it in their own branch.” Pilnik adds, “That saves money and travel time, and that person can now spend that time working or being with their families.”
The reutilization of an investment was a significant bonus for the bank. This reutilization included, for example, crosspurposing digital signs and video conferencing endpoints for multiple-use cases, including advertising, organizational communications, and training. “Something that struck us while we were implementing Cisco’s tools,” says Santiago
Battán, technology manager, “was the possibility to find an added value to a solution that originally was not acquired to give that service. In the case of video, we realized that on the digital signage used inside the organization, we could offer training and enhance the user experience in complex issues.”
The Cisco MXE3500 was an essential component, because it transforms video from any input format to any output format so that formatting does not affect the videos’ utility.
For example, advertising created for television is easily reformatted to play on Cisco Digital Signs in high definition and published on the bank’s website in Flash; this is also true of video created about any of the new features, services, and products that the bank has available to offer.
Not only has Bancor invested significantly in Cisco Digital
Signs, it has invested in Cisco TelePresence with systems located in key operating offices. “Video conferencing is allowing us to work without having to travel. [We can] attend productive meetings without having to go from one place to another,” says Pilnik.
Physical Security
In 2009, Bancor was one of the first banks in Latin America to broadly deploy the Cisco Video Surveillance Manager solution. As part of its video surveillance, the bank has already installed over 2600 cameras on the network. The deployment includes 100 HD cameras and 150 Fixed Dome cameras, and none of the 2600 cameras is analog. “Through them,” says Karim Hitt, security manager and fraud prevention, ”We have the possibility of controlling all the client accesses and movements or any person that goes in and out 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. We have management flexibility; even though the system is monitored in a central site, it can be operated through a laptop in a remote place. I could be anywhere on the planet and, from my PC, be able to see what is happening at the bank’s lobby or at any branch, in the treasury or the client service counters.” With the Cisco system implementation, the bank had a technological leap ahead. It anticipated future regulations from the Central Bank by implementing an IP data transmission system.
Bancor also implemented Cisco Physical Access Control solution on doorways of corporate buildings and in critical access areas. This role-based access system allows an
3 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

improved regulation of the people who are in internal offices or corporate buildings of the bank, with custom needs depending on the role of the employee. Cisco Physical
Access Control is integrated with the video surveillance system and offers a distributed architecture to simplify installation of electronic access control and management of policies. Credentials can be verified instantly, movements can be logged, and reports can be generated.
Bancor’s successful deployment came as a result of an effective partnership between the bank, Cisco, and Grupo
Galmes. “We found the perfect balance, great help from our technological provider and from our partner,” says Pilnik.
Battán says: “We would definitely do this again with Cisco, who was our technological provider, and we would do it with
Grupo Galmes, who stood through the whole implementation process and knew exactly what we needed.”
Grupo Galmes supported Bancor in achieving the highest standards also in the areas of LAN switching (Cisco Catalyst®
6500, 3750, and 3560 PoE), Wireless (Cisco Wireless Control
System, Cisco Wireless LAN Controller 5500, and Cisco
Access Points 3500), WAN routing (Cisco Integrated Services
Routers) and Security (Cisco Firewall Services Module, Cisco
VPN, Cisco Security Monitoring Analysis and Response
System, and Cisco IronPort®).
To find out more about Cisco video solutions, go to http:// www.cisco.com/go/videocontent. For information on Cisco
Physical Security solutions, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ physec.
Customer Case Study
Physical Security / Video Product List
Physical Security
• Cisco IP Cameras
• Cisco Physical Access Control
• Cisco Video Surveillance Manager
Video
• Cisco Digital Media Suite
- Cisco Digital Signs
- Cisco Cast
- Cisco Digital Media Players
• C60/C20 Integrator TelePresence
• Cisco TelePresence Content Server (TCS)
• Cisco Media Experience Engine (MXE3500)
Cisco and the Cisco Logo are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco’s trademarks can be found at www.cisco.
com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between
Cisco and any other company. (1007R)